


love love love

by lethandralis



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angel (Borderlands) Lives, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, angel is a jakobs, wainwright does not know how to be a parent but god damn it he is going to try so hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29119233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethandralis/pseuds/lethandralis
Summary: some things you do for money, some you do for fun, but the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by oneor, the story of wainwright jakobs and his niece, the siren.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	love love love

**Author's Note:**

> no, seriously, content warning for discussion of child abuse. this is jack we're talking about, dude. he sucks.  
> also, thank you to [claptraprights on tumblr](https://claptraprights.tumblr.com/) for allowing me to take her [post](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/claptraprights/639141067158126592) and run with it. oh boy, am i running with it!

The call comes in at 3:35 AM Eden-6 time. Under other circumstances, it wouldn’t have even woken him, but it came through on his personal line, not his business number. No caller ID.

“What in the name of all things holy do you want at this ungodly fuckin’ hour?” he grumbles into the receiver.

“Wainwright? Jakobs? Hello?” says a voice he’s never heard before. He makes an acknowledging sort of grumble in reply. “Hi. Um. Listen, man, you don’t know me, but I need your help. It’s about Angel. You remember her?”

_Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit._ “I ain’t heard anything about Angel in years.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that. Listen, I can’t say much. This is real risky. But Angel ain’t really supposed to be here, right now, and she needs a place to lay low. She’s pretty sick. Is there any—”

Wainwright cuts the stranger off. “I’ll send you coordinates right now. Meet me at the back door. There’s no cameras there.”

“Right. Uh. Okay. Thanks, man.”

_Click_.

Wainwright has never gotten dressed so quickly in his life. He’s at the back door so fast, in fact, that he has to stand there and wait for several minutes. Eventually, though, he hears the telltale whirring of the fast travel at the other side of the building, and then labored footsteps. Two figures emerge from the darkness, one quite large and holding a bundle of… something, and one not so broad, but similarly tall. He flips on the porch light.

“Hey, thanks,” says the skinnier one. “We should… probably talk.”

When his eyes adjust, he realizes that the bundle in the larger man’s arms is _Angel_ , so much older now than when he last saw her but still unmistakable. From the looks of it, she’s unconscious.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing down a tidal wave of nausea as he forces himself to look somewhere, _anywhere_ else. “Come inside. Please.”

They settle in a sitting room, not the best place but the closest room to the back door. The larger man lays Angel down on a couch. Wainwright can’t bring himself to sit down. He stands off to the side, wringing his hands.

“So,” says the skinnier man. “I’m Mordecai. This is Brick.” Brick waves at him, an awkward little gesture. “We’re, uh. We’re friends of Angel’s, sort of. It’s a long story.”

Brick, now that Wainwright takes a good look at his face, looks like he’s about to cry. Mordecai looks like he _has_ been crying. Wainwright decides not to mention that.

“Anyway. You know Angel’s dad? Jack?”

The nausea in Wainwright’s gut blossoms into _hatred_ , acidic and hot. “Yeah. Never was much fond of the guy.”

Understatement of the century.

Mordecai fidgets with his hands. “Yeah, so, he kind of-“

Brick cuts him off, apparently having found his composure. “Angel’s a siren. Jack kept her locked up, pumped her full of eridium. Wanted her to help him take over Pandora. She’s _supposed_ to be dead, but she ain’t. Jack thinks she is, anyway. We figure this is the safest place for her to be, right now.” His voice is loud in the cramped room, but tremulous. Mordecai looks almost thankful for being talked over.

Wainwright walks behind the sofa, leans on the back of it so he can look down at her. She’s breathing, slowly and evenly, which is a small miracle. She’s _ghastly_ pale, with deep purplish-black circles beneath her eyes. There is absolutely no color in her cheeks. There’s a swirling light-blue pattern running up her left arm, and it glows in a way that Wainwright’s never seen before. She looks so _brittle_. He doesn’t even want to touch her, for fear of shattering her into a million pieces.

“I didn’t know she’s a siren,” he says, quietly. “Stopped really hearin’ from that part of the family once Bernadette passed. I tried to keep in touch but. Well. Didn’t really work.”

The other two gentlemen stay silent. A long moment passes.

“What can I do? To help her?”

“We got a doctor,” says Mordecai. “She knows everything about siren… stuff. We can get you in touch.”

“We don’t think Jack’s been takin’ care of her,” adds Brick. “Aside from siren things, we know she just needs to rest. She helped us with a lot.”

Angel is eighteen years old. If Wainwright remembers right, she’ll be nineteen in November. The horrible, awful truth of what she’s been through, of what Jack has done to her, is beginning to sink into him. He’s not sure whether to scream or cry or collapse.

“You taken down Jack yet?” he asks.

“No,” says Mordecai.

“Workin’ on it,” adds Brick.

Wainwright takes a long, steadying breath. When he speaks, it’s low and even. “When you take that no-good shit-for-brains sunnuvabitch down, you shoot him with a Jakobs for me. Right in the head. Can you do that?”

Brick and Mordecai exchange a glance. “Yeah. We can do that.”

* * *

Angel isn’t his niece, but she may as well be. She’s his first cousin once removed, but given that he’s an only child, the distinction doesn’t much matter to him. Not as though he could’ve explained it to her when last he saw her, when she was four years old and the cutest goddamn thing he’d ever seen. And when she’d called him _Uncle Winny_ , he couldn’t help but to go along with it. Wainwright had always been a sucker for little kids, and Angel won him over in an instant.

But then things had changed. Bi-yearly visits and frequent calls fizzled out into nothing. With the word of his cousin’s tragic and sudden passing, he thought they might just need time to heal. But then months turned into years, and every package and message he sent went unopened, return-to-sender. After three years, Wainwright had given up hope of seeing his sweet little raven-haired niece ever again.

If only it hadn’t happened in this way.

* * *

Angel wakes up after about twenty minutes on the couch and a healing syringe. When her eyes open, she jumps, glancing around wildly.

“Hey, shhh. Angel, sweetheart, it’s alright. You’re safe,” says Wainwright, in the softest and gentlest voice he can muster. Brick and Mordecai have already left, with a promise to send along medical help for Angel as soon as they can.

“What the fuck?” she says, voice gravelly. She makes a move to get up, but Wainwright keeps her down with a hand on her shoulder.

“Easy now. You been out a while, baby girl, take it slow. You ‘member me?”

Angel blinks at him several times. She looks like a child, shrinking back, making herself small. He takes his hand away.

“…no.”

He feels his heart break just a little bit. “That’s okay, sweet thing. It’s been a long time. I’m your Uncle Wainwright, you remember? I ain’t seen you since you were probably four years old.”

She stares at him for a long moment. “Uncle Winny?”

Wainwright smiles, a fragile and tearful thing. “There you are, Angel. You’re on Eden-6. You’re safe here.”

Angel’s eyes dart wildly around the room again. There’s a lamp on in the corner, spilling light onto the green wallpaper and tall book-cases. There's cobwebs in the high corners. “What happened?”

Wainwright feels like he might cry, like he needs to step into the hallway and scream until his lungs collapse. “A lot happened. Your friends got you free of your daddy and got you here. They know you worked real hard to help them, and they want you to be safe. Your daddy-“

Angel cuts him off. “He’s not my dad. Not anymore.”

He blinks in surprise. “Right. Sorry. _Jack_ prob’ly thinks you’re dead, I’m afraid to say. You’re here so that nobody finds out you ain’t.”

She puts her hand against her forehead. “If I’m not dead, why do I feel so awful?”

“Probably because you ain’t being pumped full of eridium no more. Developed a dependence on it, I’d bet. Your friends are gonna get you help, say they know a doctor who’s an expert on siren… stuff.”

She nods, slowly.

“I’m tired.”

Wainwright runs a hand through her hair, which is thick and black and unkempt. A few strands come out stuck to his fingers, which he tries not to think about. “I’ll get you some blankets, sweet thing. Stay here.”

* * *

By the time Angel wakes up again, Wainwright’s found her a room, fitted it with clean linens, and sat on the phone for an hour learning about siren physiology and eridium dependence. She still looks exhausted when she wakes up, but she complains of being hungry, so he shuffles her off to the kitchen. She tries, for a brief moment, to stand on her own, but her knees give out almost instantly. He carries her in his arms, trying not think about how light she feels. This close to her, he can see her veins through the skin on her forearms. There’s large bruises on the insides of her elbows, like she’s had blood drawn every day for a year.

“I gotta tell you,” he says, as he fries eggs in bacon grease. “You’re gonna feel worse before you feel better. Doctor says you’re addicted to eridium, more or less, and you gotta come off it.”

“I already feel pretty bad,” she says. Her voice sounds awful, like she’s twenty years older and a pack-a-day smoker. She leans heavily on the edge of the table where she sits.

“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. It’s gonna get better, though. Doctor says a couple weeks and you oughtta be doin’ better. She says it’ll be like a bad stomach flu.” It barely feels helpful, but it's what he's got.

She doesn’t respond. She seems lost in thought, so Wainwright leaves it there. A few minutes later, he sets a plate and utensils in front of her, which seems to snap her out of it. She thanks him before tucking in.

Angel eats like she’s being watched, with measured bites and pristine table manners. For a brief second, she puts her elbow on the table, and then recoils from it like she’s been hit with a cattle prod. Wainwright just sits there, quiet, not drinking his coffee.

* * *

While Angel sleeps some more, Wainwright sets to work again, ordering her clothes and art supplies and whatever else he thinks a teenage girl ought to have. He knows she _used_ to draw, a long time ago, but isn’t sure if she still does. But he figures she deserves to have something to do, if she’s gonna be sick for a while. He sits on the floor of the hallway outside her room, listening for any sign of distress, placing orders for express shipping, running up an exorbitant balance on his credit card.

At exactly no time in his life did Wainwright think he’d be a parent. The reality of it had solidified when he was twenty-one and finally, _finally_ realized why exactly he’d only half-heartedly dated one woman. His coming out had been bittersweet, an embrace of who he was and a nail in the coffin all at once. Who in their right mind would want to start a family with the gay, half-blind heir to Jakobs? Not as though folks were lining up around the block beforehand, either.

But Angel feels… different. An opportunity to put some good into the world, to help somebody. To have a family again.

Maggie passed away four years ago. She had been sick for a year, a lingering illness that seemed to hollow her out. The silence left in her wake is deafening. She’d been the life of the estate, sweet and charming and all the same firm and uncompromising. After her funeral, most of her side of the family up and moved away, back to her home. They’d taken much of the joy out of the estate with them. (Not that Wainwright could blame them; Montgomery isn’t always terribly fun company. He only got worse after Maggie passed.)

His father is still around, of course; he still sleeps in their marriage bed, still dusts the portrait of her in the hallway. He wears his wedding ring every day. But it’s different, now. Much of their lives has been overtaken by business, work, money. He calls his father _Montgomery_ so often that he occasionally forgets about ever having called him _Papa_. It hurts in a place that Wainwright can't identify.

Angel will never call him _Papa_. She’s a grown young woman. It’s fairly likely that she’ll want to up and leave once the mess with Jack dies down, and Wainwright understands that’s her right. Eden-6 has never been her home; she’s thoroughly Pandoran. He’s thoroughly Edenian. They’re cut from a different cloth.

But god damnit, she’s something. She’s got the same spark in her eyes as her mother, the same raven-black hair as his grandfather. Despite every inch separating them, she’s family.

He has to get this right.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! it will be less sad later, i promise.  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ceruleanspruce) || [tumblr](http://ceruleanspruce.tumblr.com/)


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